How to be your own editor

I have a strange confession to make: I love editing. Before I was a writer, I was a children’s non-fiction book editor. I spent several years restructuring, rewriting and tidying up other people’s work.

When I started writing books myself, I wanted to incorporate my editorial skills. But it’s hard to edit your own work. How can you achieve a feeling of separation from your own writing and look at it objectively? I like to think of my first draft as a terrible manuscript sent in by an author; it’s down to me to knock it into publishable shape. The text goes through several versions, the process taking far longer than cobbling together the original draft. Gradually, I transform it from a scrambled mess into readable prose.

Although I enjoy editing, my students seem to hate it. In a workshop entitled ‘How can I improve my grade?’ I asked the group of undergraduates and postgraduates from various disciplines to write on a sticky note how they felt about editing their essays. Apart from one participant, who joyously wrote ‘eager’, the rest expressed such sentiments as ‘anxious’, ‘stressed’, ‘fed up’ and ‘prefer to avoid it’.

The trick to making the editing process less fearful is to break it down into manageable chunks. You can’t simply read your essay passively, hoping that mistakes will leap out at you. I advise dividing the work into two main stages and drawing up a checklist of tasks so you focus on one at a time.

First, examine what you are saying. Are you answering the question? Is your structure clear? Make sure your argument flows through the essay and that you have a good topic sentence at the start of each paragraph to make your point. Then review how you are expressing yourself: divide any over-long sentences and cut unnecessary words and phrases. Ensure your grammar and punctuation are correct, that you have used terms consistently, and check your spelling. Finally, make sure your assignment is laid out in the correct format, with accurate referencing.

What’s the clincher to persuade you this lengthy process is worth the effort? Every editorial task you carry out will help you to improve your grade. Good writing is all in the editing. It’s as true for students as it is for academics and professional writers.